Fortunately, there’s a judge in this story who has some damned sense.
Barry A. Hazle Jr. served a year in prison on a drug charge. After he got out, his parole agent sent him back for being an atheist.
Now, the 41-year-old Redding computer technician has won a ruling from a Sacramento federal judge against the state and stands to collect damages for having his constitutional rights violated.
Hazle doesn’t have a whole lot of my sympathy, being a convicted criminal and all. But being forced to attent religious indoctrination as a term of his parole? Ummm… no. Unless, of course, the system works out so that fundamentalist Christian parolees must attend Islamic training and Muslim parolees must do public service at the local Bacon And Ham Cookout.
7 Responses to “Atheist? Go directly to prison.”
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You got it: I can live with the state imposing justice, but not religion.
Jim
Sounds to me like the State wasn’t imposing religion as much as it was permitting one parole officer to impose his religion on a parolee.
I’m a little surprised California admits officially that religion exists.
Don’t make anyone attend Islamic training. We don’t need any more jihadists.
Mike- No kidding. I didn’t think they had anything but athiests, muslims and pagans there.
> I didn’t think they had anything but athiests, muslims and pagans there.
Actually, lotsa Christians there. There are 1.2 bagrillion HispaniLatinChicanoMexicans living there, the vast bulk of whom are Catholic. Of course, if you are an Evangelical, Catholics ain’t Christian…
> Sounds to me like the State wasn’t imposing religion as much as it was permitting one parole officer to impose his religion on a parolee.
When you allow your agents to do something, that’s essentially *you* doing something.
“When you allow your agents to do something, that’s essentially *you* doing something.”
Yes. My thought was that there was simply no one overseeing the parole officers, making them gods. That’s certainly the way I’ve seen parole officers work in Virginia. (Not for me: for a family I know. “Jerry Springer” may be theater, but there are persons who act in those ways and who don’t get paid for it.)
Catholics? The family that knows the parole officers is also one that has chosen hispanic males as boyfriends, so I get to meet all sorts of hispanics. They’re as seriously Catholic as I am Japanese.
I see all kinds of ignorant crap coming out of parole officers here in PA, and the domestic relations nazis, too. These people think they are god, and act accordingly. With the full support and sanction of the state, so yea, it is the state doing it. On that other hand, I know several Federal cons on parole, and they get a whole different kind of treatment. Almost as if they were actual human beings, instead of merely property.